The Hound of the Baskervilles

This was the only feature length entry in the Granada Holmes series that I hadn't seen, but finally caught up with it - compared to the others it isn't one of the best, mainly because the bulk of the film has Holmes absent or as a shadowy presence, a disembodied voice. I'm not knocking the performance of Edward Hardwicke as Watson, who is as good as ever, as the good doctor is sent to the wilds of Dartmoor with the quicksands and the ghostly howls, to protect the American heir to the Baskerville fortune.

When Jeremy Brett as Holmes is in this, he is superb (that first scene with Watson, and following with Mortimer; the scene in the hut; and - as so often in this series - an ambivalent attitude to the lady in distress). There was no finer interpreter of Holmes and this film, around halfway into the series, gives him a number of scenes to put across that tortured, mischevious genius.

As a completist, I'm glad to see this at last. It has the look and feel of the other episodes (the camerawork was always superb with its plethora of odd angles, reflections, and close-ups) and is perhaps the best version of 'The Hound'. Perhaps it is just simply below Conan Doyle's best, and viewers expect more than the material can give.